


wings

by youremynumberone



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Character Study, Junhui-centric, M/M, Second person POV, haikyuu easter eggs, hansol as the sun, the ardor of sports fic without the sports
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28521564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youremynumberone/pseuds/youremynumberone
Summary: Jun leaves the comforts of Shenzhen and flies straight into the shivering city of Seoul. Hansol arrives with the sun two weeks later.
Relationships: Chwe Hansol | Vernon/Wen Jun Hui | Jun
Comments: 22
Kudos: 63
Collections: Seventeen Rare Pair Fest: 2 Rare 2 Pair





	wings

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [SVTRarePairFest2](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SVTRarePairFest2) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> jun is cold all the time. hansol warms him up. (e.g. pressing hot packs into his hands, giving him warm food / drinks, gifting him clothes, holding hands, hugging, sharing blankets, etc etc. go wild)
> 
> inspired by me wondering how jun survives korea's winters. & then, that star road ep happened, where jun talks about freezing in korea & how shenzhen never gets that cold. (fun fact: shenzhen has an average low of 12 degrees C / 54 degrees F in the dead of winter & it never snows. basically: vastly different climate than korea)
> 
> \+ discussions of homesickness  
> \+ hansol cooking something warm to remind jun of home, trying his best to make it taste authentic, etc.  
> \+ holiday season melancholy of not being able to spend it with family / at home  
> \+ idolverse or non-famous, any rating okay!
> 
> also, [this pic of vernon](https://twitter.com/miwon17_/status/1296782714738053120?s=20) being the only one wearing a sleeveless shirt mid-winter. 
> 
> ++
> 
> Written mostly for me, but also, partly, you'll know when you see, for Lai.

"Because people don't have wings, we look for ways to fly."

Haruichi Furudate

You are seventeen when the plane halts tremblingly in Korean soil. You look over at the wings of the plane and tune out the garbled words of the language you are only starting to learn to speak, and while it was you who wanted to come here, in this foreign country, you wish nothing at the moment but to be back in Shenzhen, in the heat of your house, in the comforting dark of your little room.

It is the middle of October and based on your research, it’s still fall. Which means it isn’t winter yet. Which means it shouldn’t be as cold, but it is, and you buckle in on yourself as you step out of the airport and the biting air rips you open.

It takes you more than two hours to get to the university, another twenty minutes to find your room in the far wing of the dorms. Although it is still just as chilly inside, you are grateful for the cover the walls provide and almost melt into the cool naked mattress, a single bed across another empty bed.

The unpacking, you do quickly. Besides, there isn’t much. You are used to living simply and taking up as little space as possible, in spite of your height, of your reputation on the court. A plain fitted sheet. Some clothes, which you immediately figure aren't going to be enough when the next season swiftly rolls in. Your team jersey, you hang up carefully, even if they probably will issue you a new one. Even if there’s no one to see. A few books, a bar of soap. A bottle of water. A photo of your younger brother, face shiny with sweat as he kneads a badly formed dough for the noodles he was trying to make for your birthday last June. You smile to yourself as you tape it atop your desk. The wall starts to feel more familiar.

Inside the pocket of your luggage sits a letter from your best friend you haven’t opened yet. You’re grateful for the privacy when you start to read it. He’s always had the ugliest handwriting, and you crack up amid your wet eyes as you try to figure out if it says defend or defeat. You fold it back to its envelope carefully, almost reverently, and then tuck it under your pillow.

You get up early the next morning. A force of habit. And also because you hardly got to sleep, because the room was too cold. You had no idea how to turn the heater on, or if it even was working, as all the print was in English, while the Korean and Chinese translations had gotten all smudged. You are worried you might press something wrong, don’t know who else to ask. Didn’t want to bother anyone. So you shivered all throughout your sleep and in a mix of frustration and desperation, you get up at quarter to six in the morning if only to start moving. You decide to go out for a run. Your body craves the movement.

Instantly, you regret it. The October air is even more unforgiving in this hour.

But you are already outside in your hoodie and sweatpants so you keep your feet moving. You know how to run and you know that when you do it for some time you will be rewarded with heat. Except it somehow doesn’t work that way here because your feet can’t keep moving fast enough and your face is aching from the cold. Stupid. You turn a random corner and follow the heated glow of a 24-hour convenience store. You run inside so fast you almost slam face first into the glass.

You get a hot drink and several hot packs. As many as the bills in your pockets allow.

The second night is only a little bit better but you still count it as a blessing.

The following weekend you find a shopping mall to buy blankets from but immediately realize you can’t afford the plush, heated type yet. You get two of the cheaper one instead. You promise to get one once your training allowance comes.

The cold still seeps in, two blankets in. You are still alone in your room for two.

You learn to make instant soup with the microwave and you learn to swallow the bad taste of the artificial flavor tastelessly advertised as the Taste of China. You try out some phrases you know in their language and although you are aware how strange it sounds in your voice, you are mostly understood and it gives you a vague, stupid sense of relief. You keep practicing.

The classes start and somehow, you get by. You are limited to mandatory language courses and a few others that can be reflected back home in your own school, so you’re not set too far behind when the season is over and you have to go back. It’s okay. You take what they give you. You wear two shirts underneath your jacket and don’t take off your socks when you go to bed. You learn the streets around the university. The signs and the bus lines.

Soon you are introduced to your teammates and you quickly find out they can’t say your name right. So they settle into calling you Jun. You nod, you don’t mind it. Besides, here, you are just number nine. And you are here for another matter entirely. Finally, the whistle sounds. Your teammates, the athletes here, when they see you play, when they watch you fly across the court, they gasp; when you set the ball perfectly, they nod in acknowledgment, mouth open. They say it, they call you the genius setter, the nickname that got you scouted for. They look at you with eyes wide with awe. This part here, you revel in it. You simmer in their admiration for as long as they will let you. You say in your practiced tongue, folding yourself small, thank you, thank you, I will work harder.

That night, you call your family and you tell them about it. You brag to your brother and you bicker and you laugh and then you tell each other good night. What you don’t say is you miss them and you’re happy right now, and it’s not so bad here, but you would much rather be back home. As if hearing your thoughts, he tells you that you deserve to be where you are.

“I know I don’t have to tell you but work extra hard over there, ge!”

You bury deep into your blankets and it’s almost as if your brother’s voice in Mandarin is warmth itself, like a third blanket, embracing you and lulling you to sleep.

Another week passes by quickly. You get used to the cold, although every day it seems like it’s getting even colder. You are never wearing less than three layers of clothing. You also get used to running early in the morning and have learned to wear a mask over your face to keep your nose and lips from freezing. You find comfort in the gym and try to stay as long as you can. The warmth inside of it, when you close your eyes, lying on the hardwood floor, your skin warm and flushed with sweat, it almost feels like the heat of your kitchen back home. When you close your eyes and try hard enough, you could almost hear the sound of knives chopping herbs. Garlic hitting the oil. Voices floating, calling you to the already crowded table where they saved you a seat.

Inevitably, you go back to your room by your lonesome and settle in for another chilling night.

Then it is Sunday and the door is being slammed open. The room is dark because it is still early. You jolt awake and from your bed you watch as a boy stands breathless in the doorway. Behind him, there is brightness like you haven’t seen in what feels like so long.

You glance outside. It is sunny. Like Shenzhen, like home.

“Hellooo,” the boy bellows, easily toeing his shoes off, dropping his bags on the floor, and going straight for the bed opposite you.

He looks at you, really looks at you. His eyebrows raise slightly and the edges of his mouth tug up into a smile. Curiously, you touch a hand to your cheeks. Slightly dig a finger to your eyes. But he seems to catch himself, shakes his head, hiding a little shiver in his thin, colorful shirt and then says, “Holy shit! Why is it so cold in here?”

Then you watch him quickly crouch down and fiddle with the heater. Finally, it starts to hum. For the first time in two weeks, the room begins to fill with kind, generous heat.

You sigh and you watch the boy watching you. You smile back at him, grateful, as you let yourself bask in this new found warmth.

“Chwe Hansol. Call me Hansol,” he says, reaching out a friendly hand, and you take it without much thought, only to realize your fingers must have been freezing. Hansol notices this and doesn’t let go, instead clasps his other hand over his right holding yours, rubbing them together slightly. “Please don’t tell me you haven’t had the heater turned on until right now,” he says easily, slowly, a light chuckle between his lips.

You grin instead of answering, because what else is there to say, other than you’re grateful you are warm right now.

“Jun,” you say simply. Like how you do often, like how you believe it’s all people need from you.

“Jun?” But this one, he asks for the rest.

It will take a little getting used to, you note, the way this boy is looking at you, but somehow it makes you brave. Somehow you hold his gaze. You allow yourself to say your whole name, not really expecting him to get it right the first time. And then, this Hansol, he pronounces your Wen Junhui perfectly.

You are a seventeen year old boy alone in a foreign, freezing country, and finally, you’ve stopped feeling so cold.

The next morning, you wake up with a slight sheen of sweat on your forehead, your two blankets kicked away from your legs, hanging precariously by the edge of your bed. You touch a hand to your flushed skin and laugh a little, sinking back into your warm, comfortable sheets.

Across you, Hansol’s lava lamp glows dimly, casting galaxies across his bare arms, the side of his cheeks, his ear. You stare, mesmerized.

When you go out to run, you go out one layer less and enjoy the freezing air.

You only know two words for generosity: one in your mother tongue, the other in Korean. Language is arbitrary, but as Hansol tosses you a new hot pack on his way out one morning, you learn another. You look at it and it’s the special kind that lasts 12 hours long. When Hansol comes back from his seminar and he’s brought home with him steaming bowls of takeout noodles that claim to be authentic Chinese, that’s one more.

You begin to extend the list of words you’ve come to associate with Hansol as you take in the warmth of the bowl of soup, the heat of it making your eyes water a little.

First, sun.

Then, of course, warmth.

And this time—

“Did I get it right this time?” Hansol asks, mouth jutting out a little, glancing at the bowl in your hands.

It lacks heat, if you’re being picky. The vegetables taste like the frozen, pre-packaged store-bought ones, and not like real leaves, like those grown in farm soil and harvested specifically for cooking. But the noodles are firm and it’s tasty. So you nod quickly, glancing up, and in your haste, spill some of the soup onto your jogger pants.

Hansol chuckles, hands you a paper napkin. “I’m relieved. I know the last one I ordered for us last week was a bit...”

You shake your head. “It wasn’t bad.”

It was. It tasted like the insides of the plastic cup and the noodles tasted like styrofoam. But it was the first meal you shared with anyone since getting to Seoul and frankly, it really was bad, but also was really good. It was very nice.

“Yeah, but I was gearing for, you know,” Hansol says, sinking to the floor in front of you. He looks up to the empty ceiling, trying to find the right words. “Like a taste of home.”

You glance at Hansol, all tiny in his baggy shirt, stirring carefully the noodles in his own bowl, as the room fills with the scent of soy and lard.

Home.

Home is hand pulled noodles and broth that has been cooking for four hours. Home is your mother soaking in the rushed compliments coming out of your best friend's mouth as he huffs and tries to swallow down his first bite of the food, the heat of it burning his tongue, making him tear up. Home is your clothes smelling perpetually of lemongrass, or of the special plum sauce, the kind that only the old ladies of Shenzhen are capable of making. Shenzhen. Home is so far away.

You put your bowl down, mulling over his words.

“What’s home like for you?”

He swallows a mouthful of the soup and then his lips break his face open like that, wide and giving, and then tells you. Offers many answers to the one question you asked.

You look at the half-empty bowl in front of you and then at Hansol, stumbling over his own tongue trying to get all the words out in between breathy chuckles, his own bowl of noodles quickly forgotten, and here. Here is another word for generosity.

You are listening to it right now.

You learn that Hansol is from New York and that he moved to Korea when he was five and has lived here since. You learn that he has a younger sibling and that he loves her dearly, by the way his eyes light up when he talks about how funny she is, how much she loves to read books, how she cuts her own bangs. You learn that he grew up in a household that honored art, that was filled with music and literature, and that Hansol also treasured it, treasured his parents even more. He enjoys looking at art. Enjoys talking about life. Enjoys listening to and making music, especially.

But when college entrance exams neared, he decided he wanted to do something else outside these hobbies, so he could carve a private, personal space for his own music. So he took up the second most artistic field he could think of outside Humanities: Science Robotics.

“I would have wanted to take up Xenoarchaeology, which is the study of extraterrestrial life forms or, uh, you know...” he looks down, avoids your gaze when he quietly says, “aliens.”

“What?”

Hansol makes a funny, childish shape with his two hands, looping them around his eyes, grinning and swaying side to side, giddy, and then mouths, “Aliens.”

You try to hide the giggle that comes out of you and let Hansol continue, “Or Astrobiology at least, but the universities here aren’t offering matured courses for those yet. As in they are still pretty new and beta-ing around it so I just took up a more general field and maybe a few years down the road, could specialize or contribute to the research around it to help the specialists really get the field down, you know.”

Yeah, I see, you nod, you pick your bowl up again and tip the last dregs of the soup and noodles into your mouth to hide the endeared smile you know is already plastered on your face.

“Anyway,” Hansol says, rising from his seat. You realize you had both already emptied your take-outs and you assume he must be tired, getting back from a whole day lecture and such. You feel slightly embarrassed for wishing he would keep talking and telling you things. Why aliens? Does he miss New York? How different is Seoul from home? Your practice isn’t until 11AM tomorrow and you have nothing better to do the rest of the evening.

As you try to reluctantly clean up the dishes, you hear him go, “So, you wanna hear some of the music I’ve been working on? I have a new weird demo inspired by the sounds I would imagine aliens to be making.”

You let the oil from the soup harden in their own bowls on the floor and you follow Hansol to his desk, not hiding your grin this time.

Then the rain comes, sudden and with force.

You get caught under the torrent of it one afternoon on your way to practice. You run for cover under the shade of one of the buildings although it’s no use, as you’re already drenched and shivering. What is wrong with this city, you whine to yourself. If it isn’t freezing, it’s wet and bleak, and just as cold. You catch sight of yourself in the glass doors and think you’ve already gotten a shade or two paler.

You step inside cautiously, as you haven’t been inside this part of the campus before, just usually walking past it. You turn a random corner, assuming it will lead you to exit to the other side of it and cross the walkway safely to the gym when you see Hansol in the next bend. He is with three other guys and they all stumble to a full stop when Hansol pauses seeing you.

“Oh, hi Hansol,” you say, your words punctuated by the loud, wet squeaky sound from your shoes. You half-bow, half-wave to the four of them.

The rain outside is strong and full, but here, inside, it’s quiet. It’s late afternoon and most of the classes, if not ongoing, have already ended.

“You’re drenched,” Hansol says, frowning at you.

You all but nod, because yeah, you are. You haven’t gotten around to figuring out how to fix the weather predictions on your phone yet, as it’s still stubbornly saying 26°C: SUNNY. You can feel water dripping from your hoodie to the floor.

Then Hansol finally looks away, glances to his friends and says, “Oh. He’s my new roommate.”

Beside him is a tall guy, and you see how tall guy quickly nudges Hansol to whisper, “You’re right. He’s pretty.”

Hansol flushes deeply and pretends to cough, but you’ve already heard it and it makes you chuckle a little despite the embarrassment. Hansol proceeds to name the guys instead, shaking his head, “That’s Mingyu, this is Wonwoo and Seungcheol. We’re all in lab together.”

“Do you need an umbrella or something?” Seungcheol asks.

“I have an umbrella,” Wonwoo slides his bulky, rectangular backpack off his shoulder to rummage. But Hansol quickly steps forward and shoves into your chest a folded and crumpled, bright orange raincoat.

It should be funny, you think, as thunder claps in the distance and the rain pours even heavier, almost like a white curtain outside, how reassuring it feels to take the raincoat, to take in the warm smile Hansol gives seeing you accept it and put it on.

“Thanks,” you say, feeling the plastic insides of the raincoat stick to your skin.

Hansol grins big. “Where are you headed?”

“To the gym. For volleyball practice.”

“You play volleyball, huh,” Hansol says with interest, eyebrows shooting up. It always makes you feel so strange when he looks at you, regards you like that. You feel your insides melt and go gooey with his attention. Your heart balloons a little, flies and soars just a little.

You fiddle with the buttons in the raincoat. You never told him the specifics of it, only that you’re an athlete, and you regret hiding it from him somehow. So you say it. You clear your throat and say it’s why you’re here. That you were scouted for the clinic and are currently training for the international team to play for East Asia next year. The boys ooohh and ahhh, but Hansol’s face is blank, merely nods. He then steps back, his eyes still on you, and says easily, oblivious of the effect his next words will have on you, “I’ll watch you one day then, Wen Junhui.”

And every time Hansol calls you by your name like that you feel a little warmer inside, like parts of his radiance shines on you, makes you feel whole, solid and seen.

You nod nervously.

You try to tug your heart back to earth.

You were flying a kite with your brother when your mother ran up to you with the news.

“Baby you got it!”

She pulls you into her chest and while you are by several arm spans longer and bigger than your mother, she lifts you off your feet and swings you around.

The envelope in her hand flops to the ground and your brother picks it up, reads the letter out loud.

“Congratulations! You have been selected to be one of the representatives of the region,” he is reading aloud, voice rising, and the rest fades into a beautiful hum as the three of you huddle together, jumping around. The string of the kite tangling in and around all your arms, laughing, and laughing, and soaring.

“You’re going to Seoul,” your mother whispers.

“You’re going to fly,” your brother, louder.

You, you’re grateful, filled with wonder.

“I’m a setter,” you try to explain to Hansol.

He nods, pushing his pink beanie off his head, cards his fingers through his hair flopping over his forehead softly. Glances at you, regards you. He had texted you to meet him at the university laundromat at half-past midnight, saying it’s when the place is empty and you can do your laundry in peace without being jostled around by a throng of students.

It is. Empty. It’s also very warm here, you note, or maybe it’s just the way your side is gently pressed with Hansol’s thick sweater. The machines hum and everything smells soft and sharp, feels familiar and brand new. A ballad is playing over the radio as light rain falls on and on outside.

“I don’t know what that means,” he says, leaning forward to watch the clothes tumble over and over, bubbling and wet in front of you. You turn to look too. You watch Hansol through the reflective surface of the machines, watch how the dim glow of the lights here turn his skin almost blue, almost purple.

Watching Hansol like that, it's embarrassing just how much he interests you. How much you want to look at Hansol, to know more of Hansol. You thought you were already way past this. That you’ve already imprinted in your head for your heart to not want to get too close. _Huh_ , you think grandly. How little the head has control over the heart.

He glances at you suddenly, slightly nudges your shoulder with his. He’s waiting for you to explain, so, okay, you try to quickly describe what you do in a game. Which, when narrowed down to its barest function, is to toss the ball, to make sure it matches the spiker’s hand, to go through the blockers, to score.

“That’s it,” you say.

Hansol tilts his head a little, curiously, eyes on you, and something about the slow, patient movement of his cracks an opening around the walls of your most private part, the part that quietly and in secret reveres the sport, your skill and raw talent in it. You start to ramble in halting Korean about how the best part of being a setter is how you touch the ball the most above everybody else, clearing a path for the others, and how even if it isn’t you who spikes and scores, it’s still one of the most satisfying positions in the team, because every score is made possible because of you, which makes every win attributed to you as well, and isn’t that the most wonderful thing about being in a team?

And then you keep talking and talking and Hansol is nodding and looking at you a little too intensely and his smile is stretching, breaking open, wider and bigger, and you are rewarded with a full view of his big grin, all perfect teeth and gums, breathtaking this up close, and you somehow can’t stop, it just keeps streaming out of you, and you hear yourself slipping into Mandarin here and there, which is weird and new and soothing in equal measures, to be able to speak like that, to be listened to like that. And Hansol is just there, letting you go on and on and on, smiling at you, on and on, as around you the machines keep spinning, the clothes keep turning. All this life going on.

“What about me?” He suddenly says.

You let out the breath you have been holding.

“If I were to play, what do you think my position would be?”

You look at Hansol, the smile still playing in his lips and try to think about it, even if you already know what he is. Because ever since Hansol there is always the ugly raincoat that’s very efficient because while he had helped fix your phone app to sync with Seoul weather, you still suck at checking it. Or a hot pack, sometimes a jelly snack, your favorite, tossed to you on his way out. Or how once, you came home to him setting up a portable hot pot on the floor of your dorm, your walls smelling strongly of vegetable stock for two nights after. Or how he would, without any hesitation, like it's the easiest gesture in the world, clasp his warm hands with yours when you get too cold sometimes but honestly often. All muscle memory. Because you think, you, Hansol, you’re a giver.

“You’re a setter,” you say, you give him that. You give back.

Because a setter is a giver.

And you find out in the coming weeks: a setter is a giver, is a lover.

You are a seventeen year old boy experiencing your very first winter and you are certain you are going to die.

When the rain stops, winter begins, and the heater is not enough. You find out the newer dorm building has heated flooring, unlike the ones in yours which just has a clunky, old machine that looks like it's about to give out even before winter is in full swing.

It never gets this bad at home. Winters are mild and relatively dry. You only get frequent fog, torrential rain, and the coldest you get is 12 or 11 degrees. The house back home is always just all heat. There are bodies around, bustling about. It’s enough to keep everybody warm.

Right now, however, you are alone in a freezing country in this room with its miserable heater and you are absolutely certain you are breathing your last few breaths. This is an embarrassing way to die and it isn’t even winter yet. You haven’t even made it to your first game in Seoul yet. What about the pro stage? What about getting a signed ball from—

Then Hansol arrives, the door swinging open. He must have been at a late Halloween party, if judging by the way his face is painted, wobbly lines resembling eyeglasses around his eyes, and a funny looking striped hat that matches his striped shirt. Distantly, you think of home, of what your friends back at Shenzhen would be up to at this hour. You are reminded of their boisterous sounds, their warmth, the humidity of November back home and you shiver even harder.

Hansol walks towards the beds, bouncing a little, and his eyes instantly zero in on you, buried in three blankets, when you realize he’s staring because the third blanket on top of you belongs to him.

“Sorry,” you whisper, then try to clear your throat. “Too cold.”

Hansol stares at you for a beat, quiet, and then he nods, holds up a finger.

“Give me ten minutes,” he says and heads straight to the bathroom.

Then you hear water running and realize he is showering. It’s probably already around midnight or even later and if it weren’t Hansol, Hansol and his absurd tolerance for the cold, you’d start to worry he might get sick or something, because it is freezing and it's absolutely not necessary to shower in this weather.

“Scoot over so we can fit,” Hansol says when he emerges from your tiny bathroom, easy, like it’s logically what a roommate needs to do when he sees his other roommate shivering in bed from the cold. He had changed into a thick, oversized gray sweater and striped pajama pants.

Instead of saying Okay, thank you, come here, and lifting the blankets and sinking into his warmth, you hold back, hesitate, suddenly shy, and say instead, “You’re gonna get sick showering in this weather.”

Hansol simply runs his hand through his damp hair and then tries to fiddle with the heater. It whines, the little machine, and starts to crackle out a bit more heat.

“I can’t lie down in bed without having to shower because I will feel unclean. And it’s way easier to take off make-up with our soap,” he says matter-of-factly, walking back to your side of the room. “Besides, it's you who looks like you’re gonna be sick at the moment. Now scoot over and let me help you.”

You should be used to it by now, to Hansol’s generosity and his strange and endless ways of extending himself.

You don’t move. So Hansol proceeds to lift the blankets himself and then sinks into your single bed, his knees knocking awkwardly with yours, the top of his head straight across your nose. His still wet hair darkening the light blue of your sheets. Instantly, you feel the heat radiating from his body. Smells like jasmine and milk and something sweet. The cold somehow making him feel more warm. Then it hits you double and you feel your skin flush violently, like the beginning of a fever. Maybe you really are about to get sick.

“Better? Are you warm now?” Hansol asks.

The simple fact of this instant is that yes, you are. Warm. The greater truth of it is that this gentle heat, this is something you associate with home. Dry and arid summers in your city. The shimmering of the asphalt in the slope towards your house. When you are sweaty and flushed in the middle of the third set of a game, when you can barely make your legs move. Your hair clinging wetly on your forehead and nape. Familiar, known, and in this foreign, freezing country, wanted. 

You can feel his hot and steady breathing straight through your multiple layers of clothes and then your body betrays you right at this moment: a chill goes straight from your fingers down to your limbs. You are certain you are going to die.

Hansol chuckles lightly. Rubs his hands together, quickly, all friction, and then wraps an arm around your waist, tucks himself under your chin. Hansol holds you even closer.

“Sorry this blanket is kinda useless. I should have let my mom send the heated one. Didn’t think I’d have use for it,” Hansol is saying. But you, you’re gone. You are watching your heart as it soars, flies, the string long gone from your grasp, as your hand clutches your chest, useless and limp between your bodies. “I’ll ask her for it tomorrow. I’ll give it to you.”

And you, Wen Junhui of Shenzhen, Guangdong, China, you can't help it.

You are a seventeen year old boy experiencing your very first winter in Seoul when you fall in love the second time.

You fall in love the first time when you are fourteen years old. 

In your village, everybody knows everybody. It’s small, it’s hot, it’s enough.

One early summer, in record-breaking heat in Shenzhen, a small boy your age arrives in a beat-up yellow pick-up truck.

From the edge of your street, you see him clutching a ball with his hand like someone will be taking it away from him. You are fixing the brakes on your bike, your hands marred with oil and dirt. He eyes you, from about three or four houses down, and holds your gaze just before his mother pulls him inside their own yard.

In your small, hot village, the next day, he comes and finds you.

“I need someone to play with,” he says, glancing up at you. “And you’re tall, so,” and then that was that.

Your slow, sticky, summer days were suddenly replaced with learning volleyball, what’s a libero, you want me to hit that water bottle from all the way here?! I need a timeout! Who touches the ball the most? You let him drag you out of your afternoon nap for practice, you watch him roll around the court, you tearfully show him your bruised arms.

“But it doesn’t hurt, does it,” he says, poking a finger onto the inside of your forearm, a faint blue speckled with little red dots.

It doesn’t, but you frown. Unused to the way your skin looks when bruised.

Then this boy, he bows his head and easily touches his lips to your arm.

“Better?” He asks, smug.

You playfully shove him back, but he is laughing, and then he is pulling you to your feet and is asking for you to toss to him again.

So you do. Then something clicks, connects. You see it, the path the ball makes, the highest point of his jump. And you make your first perfect set, which he perfectly spikes, and you feel a beautiful hum overcome you. The ball bouncing on its own on the other side of the net. You glance at him, panting heavily, crouched on all fours, eyes wide with disbelief at what the both of you have achieved. 

“More.”

Then he disappears.

What he doesn’t tell you is that he and his family move away often and quickly.

One weekend, he simply doesn’t come to the court and when you walk up to their house, it’s all boarded up and he is gone. You stay there, staring, waiting anyway, and at the tail-end of that year, the middle of the monsoon season, the sky dims and it starts to drizzle. The wind whips at you, and you feel it then, the first heartbreak of your life at fourteen, way before you realized you had fallen. Before you realize your routine with him, the practice, the bruising, the feel of the ball in your hands, had grown into affection, and had become somehow important, personal. And now, just like that, gone.

You walk back home when you start to shiver and your teeth begin to clatter.

“Why are you so nice to me,” you finally manage to ask Hansol that night, when both your phones had vibrated with warning signals for an incoming and uncharacteristically early snowfall, waking you up. It was close to four in the morning then. Hansol buried beside you in a bed meant for one.

“I’m not,” he says, voice muffled by the way his mouth is pressing onto your mattress.

In the strange half-light that isn’t morning yet but isn’t night anymore, you gather your courage.

“You are.”

Hansol untangles his arm around you and slides on his back, impossibly warm, slotting the side of his body to your chest. Eyes up on the black, empty ceiling.

Your best friend has told you all sorts of tall tales about Seoul he found online or maybe had heard from others. How every street has a Subway, not the train line, but the sandwich shop. They are different, he’s correct. But it’s not true, there aren’t really that many, you note. That a concert happens every night. Also not true. You saw a busker once and that was it. That there are as many Chinese nationals as there are Koreans. Debatable, you think, as you still haven’t met and made a Chinese friend yet, but you do agree there’s a lot of them. That it's a nation of romantics, your best friend whispered during your last night, moments after he handed you his letter. Your luggage packed away. A dark scarf he had knitted himself resting atop your bags.

“The boys there,” he huffs, playful laugh easing out of his mouth then, “they’re different. They know how to… you have to be careful.”

“What do you mean, dumbass,” you remember saying then.

 _Dumbass_.

“Because I want to,” Hansol says beside you now. He hitches his blanket all the way up to under his nose. Sighs lightly.

The air crackles, the air frosts.

When your bestfriend gifts you a volleyball to get you out of the house and you take it, you know he is right. You know you’ve missed it. You know you want to play again, even without the boy four houses down. And so you do.

One early morning, you go back to the court and you discover the joy again, in the way your body seems to instinctively know how to move, how to leap. Your legs, how to fly. You grow wings on your own and in quiet. You keep going back to the court, reclaiming it, making it your own. And it works. You find yourself joining the school team. You manage well and they accept you. How could they not? You work with the ball as if in reverence, watching it closely, understanding how it moves and flies, knowing perfectly where it should be set so it's easiest for the spiker to hit, to match, to score. Your teammates, they look at you with awe. They call you talented, they call you genius.

But when they touch you, clap a hand to your back, you don’t let it linger for long. You bow quickly and low, moving away from their arm. You had made that error before. You touch your sore arm out of habit, a phantom kiss cool against the day’s bruising.

Somehow, they get it. They keep their distance, too.

Except when you are all on the court. When you are on the court, all is fair and game. You fly, you shout. You set with precision you know is stellar and is terrifying. You score. You bump chests mid-air. You practice and practice and practice some more. You run laps by yourself until your heart begins to protest, until your body grows heavy. You take the long way home and avoid the house down the street.

At fifteen, you win your first official match. And then it comes to you again, that beautiful, dizzying hum you had felt then when you made your first perfect set. Around you, your teammates shuffle around, sweaty and joyous, eager to get a good celebratory meal. In the middle of their shouting and running, a slow dawning comes to you as you exit the heat of the gymnasium and out into the bigness of the world: it wasn’t him you had loved first, although you probably already knew this somewhere along relearning the tenderness of bruises in your sore limbs. And then as you walked down the steps, trailing behind the herd of your team with the trophy in hand, there emerged the more vital understanding that life was long and that this life you were on was not even started up yet. You look up at the blinding whiteness of the open sky and let the brightness of it burn through your closed lids. Not even close.

You go out to run twice the distance you normally do that weekend. The snow has melted almost immediately, now all gray brown smudge, and in your desperation to see more of it, your first snow, you somehow ended up deep in the city, among streets with names you haven’t familiarized with yet.

Hansol had always said you can text him if you get lost but after the strange, electrified air a few days ago when you woke up to him spooning you, his body fit snugly with yours, you just can’t bring yourself to reach out. You put your phone back into your pocket and then run and jog and walk in circles some more.

When you stop and look up, you realize you have jogged so far up this random hill you can now see Namsan Tower from where you are standing right now. That’s it, isn’t it? The iconic tower. The famous Seoul landmark. All of its 236 meters of glory. It emerges from view between the rooftops of residential buildings and tall trees already rid of leaves. It glistens under the early morning brightness, beautiful and colossal and imposing. Completely still. And from where you are standing, in the dingy streets in front of a building with faded and peeling sidewalls, completely unattainable.

The snow, gone. The tower, there. You look at it another second longer and then turn back down the slope, retracing your route, thinking and thinking, an uneasy humming falling over you.

Later, you find yourself inside a strip mall and in front of you are discounted heating pads and blankets. You thumb through one and without thinking much about it, you are already calling over someone.

You had always gotten used to preparing for the worst in life, to looking after yourself, not needing anyone's help when you know you can still handle it, you reason, as you slowly find your way back to the campus on your own. You take your time, the blanket you had just purchased snug underneath your jacket zipped all the way under your chin. This is what the allowance money is for, anyway, you reason. You expect little, you keep your distance. The boys there, you hear your best friend’s warning again. You have to be careful. You have learned your lesson.

When you get back to the dorm, Hansol is gone. And when he gets back later that night, he softly tosses to you his own blanket, big and worn and soft, even if you were already lying with what is obviously a newly bought one, quietly humming heat.

“Oh, you bought one?” He asks as he unknots the colorful knitted scarf around his neck.

You just nod, keeping the blanket he had given you folded on your lap.

“I told you I was gonna get you one,” he whines weakly, falling into his own bed.

You want to tell him, you’re on your bed with your outdoors clothes on. You should change. You should shower. You say instead, “I know. Thank you. It was… but it was discounted.”

“It better be.”

Hansol finishes his readings quickly and then falls asleep early.

You watch his sleeping figure from your side of the room and fight the urge to reach out, to maybe apologize, to perhaps say you are grateful for his kindness and the ways by which he has extended himself to make you feel welcome, to ease into this foreign place. You are using the blanket he gave you, the one you just bought today stowed in the cabinet. It’s such a small thing, but it nags at you and you want to apologize, you want to tell him so many things. I wish I could simply be as open, as willing. I wish I didn’t have to take this much time to allow myself to be your friend. Yes, I do, actually, I need your help, your direction, the attention, ah, yes, it’s hard being away from home. Thank you, I know you know exactly how it feels. Hey, Hansol. When you say my whole name like that, you want to say, you want to learn how to say. How do you get close without carving your heart out?

You learn early on that if you want to amount to something, you have to be loud and unrelenting about it. You learn this one thing, and then realize you have to learn how to be the other two. How to be loud to be heard. How to be unrelenting to be seen.

This is the part where you lag behind, where your special talent and genius can never make up for. Because there is something about being heard and being seen that makes you want to coil into something smaller and invisible. You are often perceived by others as not enthusiastic enough, not working hard enough, but you are, and you do. In private. On your own. In your own pace and time.

There is something akin to possessiveness that comes to you about what you do, about this sport, about the ball, about everything you’ve learned to do with your body in the court since that turning point two, and then three summers ago. Everything you can do now, you learned to do on your own. Because it was you who learned your body, who trained your body, bending it backwards, stretching and reaching, your mind one with your hands and your fingers, an extension of your whole being, a long graceful line, like the tall trees on top of the hill where you and your brother would fly kites. Imperfectly bending and swaying and reaching up to the sky, leaves flying.

Which is why it takes you a long time before you tell your family what you’re up to after school and even longer to let them watch you play. And yet, when they meet you stunned and proud after you win two straight sets, you realize it’s worth it to offer up this part of yourself to the people closest to you.

And so when you lose your first practice match in Seoul that winter morning and you don’t recognize any of the faces in the crowd, you are relieved. You are so relieved.

“Heard you lost,” Hansol says flatly when you meet him in the hallway of your floor after getting back. He seems to be on his way out. You are still in your jersey, and your duffel bag, which contains only a few clothes and a spare towel, suddenly feels very heavy against your shoulder.

“Yeah,” you say, avoiding his eyes, tremendously sad and let down.

You’re not even sure how he knows. There were only a handful of people from your school who went to watch, and while it is kind of a big deal here, these games and all especially in this pre-tournament season, Hansol doesn’t seem like the type to be invested in intercity practice matches when he has his own projects to be focusing on.

“It was just a practice match, right?” Hansol says, leaning on the wall a few steps from you.

You look up at him and he is looking at you like _that_ again.

A beat.

And then you nod, because what else is there to say.

“Good. Make sure you win the official match then, Wen Junhui,” he says, tucking both his hands into the giant pockets of his hoodie and then walking towards the elevator.

The harmony you had with your team back in Buji took nearly three years to establish and hone, until you could read your teammates with nothing but a glance, nothing but a little signal of the hand. It wasn’t perfect, even then, but in that setting and with the people you saw everyday, you were brave. Here, in Seoul, with people you’ve only met for two months and with a language you’re still making mistakes speaking often, it’s challenging. They trust you; you know they do, and you are grateful, but you don’t trust yourself to make the calls here yet. The jersey still feels new. The feel of the ball against your fingertips imperfect, terrified.

 _It was just a practice match, right?_ \- and yet. And yet you want to do it over: to have been more patient, to have been less tired out easily, to have given softer tosses they can match, or longer ones because the court you played at was wider, bigger than the gymnasium ten minutes away from this wing of the dorms. To have been who they had expected you to be: the genius setter. To have been simply braver.

Pride is a heavy word, one that you know and that you’ve carried with you, stubbornly: your mother saying, you can do whatever you want, I always tell you. You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. I always tell you. You are so good, baobei, do you know that. Look at you.

It only takes one win. And then another. A whole season of victories, and bigger and bigger gymnasiums until pride blisters in your hands and feet. Until it builds. Sails. Flies. And you find yourself here in Seoul, seventeen and stupid, fresh with fear, hurting after one minor loss.

The door opens.

You look up from your wet lashes. Hansol is back.

“Hey loser. Wanna mope here or wanna go out?”

What Hansol meant with go out was actually to take one of the Seoul Express Bus to get to some bus terminal and then get to another bus heading outside of Seoul. It takes two and a half hours and by then, the afternoon has slowed and slanted.

You get off at Yangyang Bus Terminal and Hansol leads you out of the station and towards the right side of the road where there emerges the coastline. Wide and brown and then even wider and bluer. You can hear the far-off sound of waves crashing. It feels absolutely freezing. 

“Where are we?”

“Naksan Beach,” Hansol says, digging his hands into his pocket deep, kicking dirt with his shoes.

“Oh.”

You look at him and then at the beach in front of you. If you feel like you’re on a rocky wave, you remember saying this to yourself at one point before. Just let your body go with the flow. You don’t know how he somehow knows. You don't feel like you’ve earned it. But you let the weight off your shoulder give.

The sea breeze always does this to you: unfreezes and uncoils you open. Lets up the realest you. You giggle as you shiver, stretching your arms wide and feeling the biting winter air lash at you, hard and tender.

“Should we get something warm to eat?”

“Hansol,” you say, pulling at his warm hand. A cheesy pick-up line that works in Mandarin sits at the back of your head and you try to see if you can translate it to Korean to say to Hansol right now. Something about ramen and something about you. You hesitate and then the moment passes. You grin anyway. Another time. “Actually let’s just get something cold to eat. Because it’s cool here, you know. Put in something cold,” you gesture at your tummy, already giddy, “to offset the cold outside.”

He stares at you, his mouth in an incredulous half-grin.

“What, you didn’t know that? What have you been doing the past years? Come ooonnn,” you say, laughing your loudest in a long time.

You buy the two of you ice cream because you owe him, this afternoon, the past two months, and because you really really want to buy Hansol ice cream.

“Back home,” you start to say, licking at the sticky chocolate dripping on the side of your cone. “Shenzhen,” you say, pointing at yourself, “it’s a coastal city, so my family or sometimes my best friend and I, would drive up to a beach just for a day to see the water.”

You tell him about Dameisha, which is filled with a wild throng of crowd during the summer, bright blue and beautiful. All the lychees you and your brother would be tossing to each other, sandwiched between bigger families and their beach implements. You tell him about Xichong, where you and your best friend had gone on to camp one stupid day in January, where the rain went on and on, drenching your gas burner and towels. About Yelin, where you went by yourself before you left, sitting on the big rocks, just looking out at the still, infinite expanse of water.

“Which one is your favorite?”

The sun starts to dip and there must be an explanation to it, because it looks wholly too round and white here from this angle, but it colors the blue of the big, open sky purple and then pink and then orange. The slow magic of its setting, an exercise in feeling and seeing.

This one, you think maybe you want to say. Two and a half hours away from Seoul, in a beach with a name you already forgot in this little city where you would be lost if left alone, what bus lines did you even take, do the buses run the whole day every hour. How will we get back? But when you worriedly turn to look at Hansol, he is calmly staring at the sunset beside you, just there, humming.

“Hey,” Hansol begins again. He is still watching the sun, the waves. “You know how when someone thinks of aliens, they think outside the sky, right? Like in galaxies out there? But you know there’s also this other theory that they could be lurking just down below, beneath the sea, in breaches underwater between tectonic plates, where a whole pathway could be existing leading to another dimension...”

“...What?”

He bursts out laughing and proceeds to tell you about kaijus and a Guillermo del Toro and plugs in your ear one of his earbuds, stop looking at me weird, here, listen to this song instead. You laugh, tickled by his fingers that graze your skin. You clear your throat and listen to the song in your right ear, the sound of the beach in the other. Above you, birds are heading home.

The sun ebbs on the horizon a bit longer, and then goes elsewhere. Content.

Here, you whisper to yourself in Mandarin. This is your favorite. Right now. You’re sure.

“Will you let me watch your game?” Hansol asks in the dark of the bus. It’s gotten late on your way back to Seoul but you manage to catch one of the trips just before it leaves. You take the second to the last row, squeezing together, slightly out of breath.

“I might lose again.”

“No you won’t,” Hansol says and he sounds so, so sure. “Wen Junhui, I will bet real money you won’t.”

You feel it then. First love is unsophisticated and greedy. It coaxes you into making promises about the future, into growing pliant and gullible. Makes you forget about your fears. Okay. You say, okay, you can come watch. Makes you ask for more. It’s in two weeks or so. I'll text you where.

And he says okay. Says thank you. Your hands tremble at his kindness and Hansol must think you're cold because he wraps his hand with yours. Warmth pools in you and all you can do is hold him just as surely.

“Thank you,” you give back.

"How many languages can you speak?"

"Korean, English, learning a bit of Japanese here and there. You?"

"Chinese," you pause, you had this pick-up line practiced in Korean. That's what language courses are for. "Korean. And, you're cute."

Hansol laughs, covers his face with his hood. And then, for the millionth time in the brief history of Wen Junhui in Seoul, your heart races and swims and soars, all _whoosh_ , all _thump thump_.

The day Hansol watches you play is also the day you lose in your first pre-tournament match against a visiting school from Daejeon with 27-29 during the third set.

One of your middle blockers gets injured at the start of the third set and without him, the team is fractured, left open wide. The opposing team takes this chance and you panic when you feel them increasing the speed of the rallies. In your haste, your tosses go sporadic, losing their accuracy. Everyone is tired and the last set has gone on longer than expected. The coach is calling for a time out.

Then you glance at the audience and you spot Hansol’s bright yellow beanie amid the audience of thick black windbreakers and white uniforms. He waves both arms above his head and yells at you to relax.

He grins, proud, and from across the court, you can’t help it. You nod. You feel yourself grinning back. When the next ball comes, you receive it and let it fly high, arcing above all the players. Everybody breathes. 

At your opponent’s match point, you make a daring move when the ball hits your hands: instead of tossing it to the spiker to your left, knowing they have him marked, you do a dump shot instead. Toss the ball right over the net. And it almost hits the floor. And it nearly catches them off guard. But they’re impossibly quick, damn it, and someone manages to follow through with it. And in one second, the ball connects and then someone spikes it straight over your side of the court. The referee blows the whistle.

And then just like that. Your team loses the third set. Your team loses the game.

There is defeat and exhaustion clear in your teammates bodies, as they lie slumped, some on all fours, panting and in tears, as the team on the other side of the net cheers and the small audience roars with them. You feel a burning deep in your head and then behind your eyes. Someone claps you on the back, and you see from the corner the middle blocker walking back to your bench with his fingers plastered and a sour look on his face.

You all line up quietly and shake the winners’ hands.

There’s talk of going out for lunch, coach’s treat, and everybody slowly shuffles around the bench to pack up and head out. But you, of course, you’re running the game through in your head. You know the dump shot was desperate, but you also know it would’ve still been blocked otherwise. You think of the missed points from the second set, which is when it all began to spin out of your control. You think about what your coach back in Buji said, about the setter being responsible for the team’s rhythm.

“Let’s get the next one, okay?” The captain says kindly, looking at you.

“Take this as an experience, all of us, to motivate everyone for when the real deal starts next year. There will be bigger overseas teams, and we all have to remain focused during the break...” And you nod, you all do, but no one is paying much attention to him anymore as the rest of your teammates meet excitedly their friends and some families who have come by to watch the first game of the pre-tournament season, consoling them, congratulating them for a good game anyway.

A crowd gathers around you and you hear everyone talking about the training break, since you won’t be going against the next team anymore, everyone will have some time off. It’s the holidays soon, too. Talks of going home, getting together, grooming a pine tree. They are all buzzing excitedly as you all exit the gym.

You think about calling your mother later. Maybe finally getting to writing a letter back to your best friend. You should find a postcard at least. Something with snow. Something cheery. You try not to think too much about being away from home for the holidays. You rub your hands together, trying to keep warm, emerging through the wide, open doors, solitary, and then.

And then there’s Hansol.

Hansol is there, and in the brief moment before he glances up to see you, you permit yourself a moment of fiction in the future in which you had won the whole season against all the overseas teams and that he had been witness to it. He had seen you fly, seen you score, seen you set that last ball that earned you the win they had flown you all the way from your home to here for. The winged miracle, you. You imagine running towards Hansol after the game, you were amazing, so amazing. You imagine a future in which you had grown more into your body, had learned better your heart and its desires, a time when you know better what your hands can do and what it wants. And in this future, you hold Hansol in your arms and then, maybe then, perhaps, possibly, with one win under your name, finally fearless, you kiss him.

For now, what matters is Hansol is here, his smile only ever slightly being eclipsed by the wild, impossible winter sun. This is what happens: he is waiting for you at the far bottom of the stairs and when he sees you, he waves three crisp bills in his hand and his smile gives way to a chuckle. You can see huffs of delicate, tender fog coming out of his laughing mouth. You know how it sounds.

“Wen Junhui!” Hansol yells, your name in his voice giving you flight, wings.

“I’m hereeee!”

 _Huh_ , you think grandly. Sparing the open, bright sky a glance. Isn’t it funny then, how a defeat can go hand in hand with so much joy and sun?

**Author's Note:**

> Biggest thanks to my friend Kai for being the sweetest reader from the very start. To AJ for answering my questions and to A for helping me edit and being excited about this even before knowing well who these members are. And to E for letting me talk on and on and on and on about the goddamn junsol. Thank you for reading!


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